Question

I am looking to get the method/action name from a task in C#. Specifically I am implementing a custom task scheduler, and would like to generate statistics on the duration a task runs, which I will then aggregate by the method running inside of the task. In the visual studio debugger you can access this and see the m_action private variable, as well as the debugger display annotation, displays it as Method={0}. Is there any way to get access to this from the Task itself?

Answer 1

Well, you could use reflection to get at the private m_action field, given a Task variable task:

    var fieldInfo = typeof(Task).GetField("m_action", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic);
    Delegate action = fieldInfo.GetValue(task) as Delegate;

Then get the Name of the method and the DeclaringType:

    var name = action.Method.Name;
    var type = action.Method.DeclaringType.FullName;

To get the fully qualified method (type + "." + name)…

But, as soon as the task executes to completion, m_action is null. I’m not sure how this would apply with TaskFactory.StartNew…